Why People Risk Their Lives for Animals in War |
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A woman stands in a doorway with a small backpack. The shelling is no longer distant. It comes in uneven bursts—a sharp crack followed by a dull, concussive thud. The pauses between impacts are getting shorter. All her neighbors left maybe a quarter of an hour ago. Her mind tells her she should do the same, and she should do it immediately.
She feels she cannot leave without her elderly dog. She keeps reminding herself that bringing her dog will slow her down and could cost her her life. Then, impulsively, she picks the animal up and puts him over her shoulder. Now she's ready to leave.
Scenes like this have unfolded repeatedly across Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began. Civilians fleeing artillery and drone attacks have carried dogs across their shoulders, tucked rabbits into backpacks, and coaxed terrified cats into carriers as they moved toward border crossings. Children clutch turtles.
To an outside observer, such decisions can seem irrational. In conditions defined by survival, risking one’s life for an animal is hard to explain. But the explanation lies at the center of how the human mind functions under extreme stress.
In environments of sustained danger, the mind adapts in order to keep going.
Dr. Richard Mollica of Harvard Medical School’s Program in Refugee Trauma has described a phenomenon first identified by psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton as “psychic numbing.”
“When people are facing the fear of death,” Mollica explains, “they can’t live every moment thinking about their own death or the death of their children. So they shut down their emotions.”
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